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Following is the transcript of remarks by the Chief Secretary for Administration and Chairman of the Steering Committee on the Community Care Fund, Mrs Carrie Lam, at a media session on the Community Care Fund at Central Government Offices, Tamar, this evening (July 19):
Reporter: (Inaudible.)
Chief Secretary for Administration: The purpose of this afternoon's meeting is for me to listen to the views of the Community Care Fund Executive Committee, because over the last year or so, the committee has been doing great things to help relieve the situation of certain vulnerable groups in Hong Kong.
The views given to me are like this: First is they welcome that in future the Commission on Poverty should really tackle policy issues, because this will provide the really permanent solution to the problems that we are seeing in Hong Kong.
Having said that, they still support the idea of using the Community Care Fund, which, as you know, still has quite a sizeable sum of money, to continue to provide immediate relief to some of the vulnerable groups or to meet those gaps in our existing social support system.
The third point is because the Community Care Fund at the moment has its own structure - it has a Steering Committee, Executive Committee and sub-groups - there is perhaps no need to replicate, to have two systems of committees working in parallel. One is the Commission on Poverty, the other is the Community Care Fund. So in terms of how we structure the businesses, the committees and the meetings, perhaps we could take a complementary approach, so the Community Care Fund will still form an important part in our work on the Commission on Poverty, but it perhaps does not need to have another very elaborate system of committees.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Thursday, July 19, 2012
Issued at HKT 19:52
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